Property in France: a visit to the vet

A young girl’s curiosity helped to cure a sweet tramp of a cat

I am sitting at the vet’s in Jolibois, holding in my arms a marmalade cat so sick that this sterile waiting room may be the last thing he ever sees. The cat, McGregor, is the sweetest tramp you could hope to meet. We only bumped into each other in the barn at La Folie a few days ago, so I am appalled to discover how much I care about him, particularly as he has a nasty habit of throwing up every meal he eats, usually on the sofa. I know we cannot keep him; I know he will be a nightmare to rehome. Most of all, however, I need to know whether he has any future at all. “Don’t you have a cat already?” asks the vet, crossly. I am half-expecting him to tell me that cats are like dressing gowns and cockerels: one is enough. But that’s not his point.

“I’m 95 per cent certain that this cat has feline Aids,” he continues, “which is highly infectious to other cats. If so, I’m afraid he’s finished. And even if he doesn’t, he has gingivitis and his kidneys are in a bad way.”

My mouth opens; no sound comes out. I wasn’t banking on unbroken sunshine in McGregor’s future, but I wasn’t expecting a blizzard. “So what do you want me to do?” he shrugs, as if he were a Roman gladiator, sword poised, waiting for the emperor’s thumbs-down.

There is no point asking the vet what he would do, because his eyes say it all. Some people are cat people and some are not. But he does concede that if an Aids test is negative, McGregor might just – expensively – pull through.

So I ask for the test and sit in the waiting room with a lump in my throat. Is it really up to me to have him killed today?

He purrs as I stroke him for the last time before the vet gestures me back in, his face a broken tombstone.

Beside me, a young girl points up at the noticeboard. “Regards, maman. Someone has lost a cat,” she chirps. “Wait, wait,” I call to the vet, like a death-row prisoner begging for a stay of execution. For there, look, look, is a picture of a marmalade cat called Charley who apparently went missing back in August from Darnac, a village 15 miles from La Folie.

I follow the vet back into his room where he announces, without rapture, that the Aids test is negative. So I return to La Folie with a €106 bill and McGregor, much to everyone’s chagrin except Amélie and Mirabelle.

All my hopes now lie in the hands of a Frenchman called Mohammed, whom I persuade to drive down from Darnac to La Folie to take a look at McGregor. “Charley?” he whispers, falling to his knees. “C’est toi?”

This is the point at which McGregor is supposed to raise his head and utter a little cry of recognition. But either he hasn’t watched the complete works of Disney or else he is doing that cat thing of playing hard to get, and instead pretends to be dead. For one uncomfortable moment I think perhaps he is.

“I could swear it’s him,” murmurs Mohammed, his voice shaking with emotion. “But he looks so weak and I could have sworn he had a small nick out of his ear, just here.”

“Perhaps it has healed,” I reply, wincing at my own shamelessness. This whole scene feels surreal, like a feline remake of The Return of Martin Guerre. I cannot tell if McGregor really is the long-lost Charley. And I wonder if this matters.

Mohammed shakes his head and goes to fetch his five-year-old son, Karim, from the car, as if he were the chief priest asking for a second opinion about the Messiah.